The most likely Rangers player to get traded a month ago now has the public assurance of general manager Jeff Gorton that he isn’t going anywhere.

Defenseman Keith Yandle will be an unrestricted free agent after this season, but Gorton said unequivocally Sunday “we’re not trading him” before Monday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline. Having just acquired forward Eric Staal in a blockbuster deal, Gorton is all in on this season — and that includes Yandle.

“I haven’t spoken to Keith about this, I know there is a report out there, [but] I would say that we’re not trading him,” Gorton said. “We like the fact that he can really move a puck, that he can play in your top four, he can play on your power play, he can play against most players in the league. He’s a great teammate. He’s here. He wants to win.”

Yandle, 29, was acquired just before last year’s trade deadline in a deal with the Coyotes that included shipping off NHL defenseman John Moore, top prospect Anthony Duclair, along with first- and second-round picks. Arizona absorbed half of Yandle’s annual $5.75 million salary-cap hit for last season and this one.

“When we acquired him, we had him at one year left at a real good number, half the price, too,” Gorton said. “The way we looked at it was we were going to have at least two good runs with Keith and that’s how it’s going to play out.”

Gorton said the team still had enough money under the salary cap to add a “small-salary player, if we wanted to,” and they did that Sunday night with a swap of minor leaguers.

The Blueshirts traded forward Ryan Bourque — the son of Hall of Famer Ray Bourque — to the Capitals in exchange for forward Chris Brown. Bourque was the Rangers third-round pick (80th overall) in 2009 and played his only NHL game at the end of last season. Brown, 25, was playing for AHL Hershey this season after having played 23 NHL games with the Capitals and Coyotes since leaving the University of Michigan in 2012.

The Rangers don’t intend to place forward Rick Nash on long-term injured reserve, still optimistic that he will return before the regular season is over. On Friday in Texas, coach Alain Vigneault said Nash was “a week to 10 days” away from starting lower-body workouts. He has been out since Jan. 22 with a deep bone bruise in his left leg that has acted like a fracture.

If he were to go on LTI, a lot of salary-cap space would be opened up — thus making it possible to add more salary in another trade — but Nash would have to stay out of the lineup until the playoffs.

The Rangers helped make room on the roster for Staal by sending forward Marek Hrivik back to AHL Hartford. Hrivik had played in four games, and had impressed Vigneault.